Brain injuries are complex and can have multiple severe clinical outcomes. Injury of the brain and spinal cord can result from head trauma, stroke, traumatic birth, heart surgery, cardiac arrest and patients requiring cardiovascular support with ventricular assist devices or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). Moreover, detection of subclinical brain injury is difficult, especially in children and neonates with birth-related injury. Children with sickle cell disease are at high risk for subclinical brain injury. Untreated subclinical brain injuries in children can progress to overt stroke, neurological damage, learning problems and memory loss.
Unfortunately, clinical tools such as physical exam, and imaging (CT Scan or MRI) are subjective, not widely available, not sensitive or specific enough and or too costly to identify the infant, child or adult with brain injury. There is a great clinical need to identify patients with brain injury and especially subclinical injury because these infants, children and adults are at significant risk of progressing to overt stroke and development of cognitive and motor loss, and dementia.